Steidlville

In 2004 the Centro Cultural de Belem in Lisbon initiated the exhibition project MIRROR, MIRROR , Portugal as seen by Magnum photographers. The book which accompanies the exhibition is a reflection on Portugal featuring the personal visions of 13 photographers whose photographs were taken at different moments in time, under specific circumstances. One of the first Magnum photographers to visit Portugal was Henri Cartier-Bresson who later included some of his pictures in his famous book “Les Européens”, published in 1955 by Tériade. In 1974 and 1975 Gilles Peress, Guy Le Querrec, and Jean Gaumy went to Portugal in order to report on the Portuguese revolution. However, the focus of the exhibition is not only to gather icons from the Magnum collection: Susan Meiselas, Josef Koudelka and Miguel Rio Branco have received special “cartes blanches” from the Centro Cultural de Belem to create work conveying contemporary visions of Portugal. Whereas Susan Meiselas reported on the social reality of immigrants from former Portugese colonies, Josef Koudelka revisited the Portuguese landscape with a his lyrical geometry and Miguel Rio Branco collected traces from Portugal’s history in order to compose a “tableaux”.
The book will feature about 100 images by the following photographers: Bruno Barbey, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Thomas Hoepker, Jean Gaumy, Bruce Gilden, Josef Koudelka, Guy Le Querrec, Susan Meiselas, Inge Morath, Martin Parr, Gilles Peress, Gueorgui Pinkhassov, Miguel Rio Branco.